ancies, the "Correspondance de Napoleon." The
motives which led to the Eastern Expedition are there unfolded. In the
letter which he wrote to Talleyrand shortly before the signature of
the peace of Campo Formio occurs this suggestive passage:

"The character of our nation is to be far too vivacious amidst
prosperity. If we take for the basis of all our operations true
policy, which is nothing else than the calculation of combinations
and chances, we shall long be _la grande nation_ and the arbiter of
Europe. I say more: we hold the balance of Europe: we will make
that balance incline as we wish; and, if such is the order of fate,
I think it by no means impossible that we may in a few years attain
those grand results of which the heated and enthusiastic
imagination catches a glimpse, and which the extremely cool,
persistent, and calculating man will alone attain."

This letter was written when Bonaparte was bartering away Venice to
the Emperor in consideration of the acquisition by France of the
Ionian Isles. Its reference to the vivacity of the French was
doubtless evoked by the orders which he then received to
"revolutionize Italy." To do that, while the Directory further
extorted from England Gibraltar, the Channel Islands, and her eastern
conquests, was a programme dictated by excessive vivacity. The
Directory lacked the practical qualities that selected one great
enterprise at a time and brought to bear on it the needful
concentration of effort. In brief, he selected the war against
England's eastern commerce as his next sphere of action; for it
offered "an arena vaster, more necessary and resplendent" than war
with Austria; "if we compel the [British] Government to a peace, the
advantages we shall gain for our commerce in both hemispheres will be
a great step towards the consolidation of liberty and the public
welfare."[94]

For this eastern expedition he had already prepared. In May, 1797, he
had suggested the seizure of Malta from the Knights of St. John; and
when, on September 27th, the Directory gave its assent, he sent
thither a French commissioner, Poussielgue, on a "commercial mission,"
to inspect those ports, and also, doubtless, to undermine the
discipline of the Knights. Now that the British had retired from
Corsica, and France disposed of the maritime resources of Northern
Italy, Spain, and Holland, it seemed quite practicable to close the
Mediterrane